


Mama, I'm in love with a criminal

by lulue79



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Loki is just done, M/M, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Tony is streaming Late Night Shows, and being a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23399215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulue79/pseuds/lulue79
Summary: For the prompt: After Odin decides to take over Earth and "gift" it to Thor, as a trial run for one day ruling over Asgard, Tony goes into hiding and creates an illegal late night show.Loki watches his videos and find him funny. He loves his sharp tongue and his cynic humor, and most of what Tony says are things Loki had already thought - if in a different context.(Also, Tony is adorable, which doesn't help)
Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark
Comments: 21
Kudos: 189





	Mama, I'm in love with a criminal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leikio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leikio/gifts).



> Sooo. I _know_ you told me to keep it short, and trust me, this is short by my standards.  
> I also had a lot of fun writing it, so thank you for daring me to do it! 
> 
> Tony's speech toward the end was by John Oliver's Late Night Show. If you don't know him, go look for his videos on YouTube. I assure you, he is more than worth it.
> 
> Enjoy!

Loki grumbled as he trudged through the tundra. Fucking Thor. One day, Loki would leave him alone to deal with his own problems. How could Odin believe him ready to rule a backwater planet like Midgard, let alone Asgard, Loki didn’t know. Thor spent his day living as he wished, waiting for his mistakes to fix themselves. He wasn’t ready for such responsibilities. The oaf needed to be taught a lesson, and he had better hope Loki wasn’t the one to deal it out.

At the beginning, it hadn’t been so insufferable. Odin had claimed Midgard as Asgard’s colony and when its people rebelled, he sent Thor with a troupe of Einherjar to subdue them. It had been fun to hear the tales of mortals believing themselves stronger than gods — until the Allfather declared that Thor was banished to Midgard, until his rule was secure and the people had truly accepted his sovereignty. A “worthy feat to judge his mettle as a King”, he had called it. 

Three years had passed since, and Midgardians were more rebellious than ever. Loki would have cheered, for it proved what he had been claiming for the past decade, if Odin-Allfather hadn’t decided his golden son couldn’t be seen as a failure, and sent Loki to help Thor.

That’s when things took a sharp turn and entered a mad dive to Hell.

Thor had shown even more incompetent than Loki had believed him to be. Oh, he had warred, and he had cemented his position as the King of Midgard — for all his flaws, Thor was a great general and mere human had no chance against Asgard’s army. But while Thor had subdued each country, he had neglected to rule them. Midgard had lost its former governments, and his new one had ‘forgotten’ to take up its mantle, preferring instead to drink, war, and fuck his day away.

This wouldn’t stand, not when Loki’s neck was now on the metaphorical chopping block.

Still, Loki couldn’t magic everything away — as much as he wished to — and Thor needed to learn. He decided to take care of Thor’s all-time-low notoriety with the Midgardians, while Thor dealt with the representatives of each country to decide how to best fix the situation.

He listened, and he observed. At Thor’s behest, Loki was introduced to the _media_ and the _Internet._ He found most content incredibly grating, but he could understand the appeal. They offered advice and analysis from different experts and confronted different point of views on issues of importance. Many of the guests intervened for their own gain, and cared not for the ones their decisions would impact, but those tools remained a way for the small people to protest against decisions taken by their governments, or actions that went against their morals. It was laughable, to imagine such freedom on Asgard.

But even more than the various _TV Channels_ , there was one _media_ that all Migardians seemed to listen to, wherever they were from. It was so infamous that it had reached even Thor’s ears and infuriated him beyond belief, when his brother usually mocked and ridiculed such displays from the Midgardians. His first decree from his ‘King’: discover where hid the cowardly man and drag him to justice.

Loki had to start somewhere, and stopping a man from spewing lies and falsehoods about his brother for the whole realm to hear was as good an idea as any. Thus, he logged onto the _internet_ , and started looking for the man who called himself Tony Stark.

In the weeks he spent looking for him, monitoring his feed, hoping to gain clues as to his location, Loki learnt several things about him. First of all? The man was incredibly smart, and annoyingly good at hiding his location. The room in which he _streamed_ was always starkly white, with no window and no background noise that would have helped locate him. Loki had sat for hours at his desk, trying and failing to devise a spell that would track the man through this infernal technology.  
But then, as time passed and Loki made no breakthrough, he began to truly listen to what the human was saying. His spiel about Thor’s incompetence during the previous meeting with Chinese diplomats made Loki laugh darkly, and his outrage every time the invasion was spoken of made his blood boil. His sass and his cynic humor made him laugh — especially when it was turned against “the Stupid Three and the Snotty Bitch”. Soon enough, Loki had stopped watching his _videos_ to look for clues, and was completely focused on the man himself, on the injustices he denounced, on the way his hands moved when he spoke, the way his eyes shone when he smiled, the way his mouth–

The worse was, all those things Stark said? They were thoughts he had had to stifle in the past, for neither Thor nor Odin would have borne hearing him speak so. And it _hurt_ , listening to them coming from the mouth of a mortal, a rebel; someone he had been tasked to hunt. But Loki couldn’t think like that, so he put his heart aside, turned off the sound and minimized the video, and got back to work.

(Loki had always been very good at lying to himself.)

(And if, some nights, he got up to watch more _videos_? Well, he was just working overtime.)

Which is how he found himself walking through the tundra during a snowstorm, cursing both Thor and Odin for putting him in this situation. At least, Midgard's Arctic circle at its worst had nothing on Jotunheim.  
Loki had finally found a way for his magic to trace back the place the videos were posted from and immediately set off to find Stark. He made himself invisible from both eyes and cameras, and teleported several kilometers away from the location, in case the man had trapped the immediate surroundings of his hideout. He didn’t bother warning Thor before leaving — his brother would charge in and kill the human where he stood, and they couldn’t have that.

Sneaking inside the building was easy — the snowstorm was the worst of it, really. It was completely underground and hosted more people than Loki would have thought. It made little doubt that those men and women were part of the rebellion that had been annoying Thor so much, and Loki would need to come back later to deal with them. For now, he had another goal, and headed downstairs. It was the most protected part of the building, and the man was important.

It took several tries, but Loki finally found the right door, and teleported directly inside.

The sight that welcomed him shocked him too much to attack, though he retained enough control not to drop his disguise. Stark was _streaming_ , and he looked, well… Bad might be too strong a word, but he definitely looked like a mess. His hair was in disarray, and probably hadn’t been watched in days, his skin was pale — too pale — and the dark bags under his eyes betrayed his lack of sleep. He was alone in the room, looking straight at a camera fixed to a table, a fierce look in his eyes, hands trembling in what might be either restrained fury or exhaustion.

Loki had never wanted to bundle someone into a blanket and take care of them more than he did in this instant.

Instead of acting on what truly was an _incredibly stupid_ instinct, Loki forced himself to listen to the man’s words.

“—know, our esteemed leader, the Great and Mighty Thor, has met yesterday with the former President of the United States of America, to discuss the future of our country. Less than twenty minutes into what should have been a _diplomatic_ discussion, Thor decided he had enough trying his hand at civility, and kidnapped the president and the six army generals that composed his guard.

“Again and again, Thor has failed to give this position the seriousness it requires. And make no mistake, this is serious. Too often, people discuss this in bloodless terms, citing the eeriness of empty streets or run-down shops. But while the streets may be empty, hospitals are increasingly bursting at the seams from the victims from our King’s negligent ways. Thousands of families in America are suffering from his lake of care, unable to work, unable to feed, unable to _survive_. The agony this parasite causes is profound.

“And yeah, this was always going to be hard. But it actually didn’t need to be _this_ hard.

“That is why it is profoundly disheartening that we are being led through this change by a man who may be less equipped to deal with this historical moment than anybody in recorded history. And look, I know this isn’t exactly the first time that I’ve criticized Thor. But lately, things _had_ been changing and people had finally begun to hope for a lessening, if not an end of this terrible ordeal. I cannot tell you _how much_ I was rooting for him to do this better. Handling this crisis should be the first priority of any decent leader, and in the past few weeks Thor _had_ made advances in this direction.

“So tell me, Thor. Why the _fuck_ did you think kidnapping the one thing still holding this country together was a good idea? Our President better be alive and whole; they _all_ better be alive and whole, because the Avengers are coming for you. We don’t forgive, and we certainly don’t forget.

“This is all for today, people. As always, keep hoping, and stay safe.

“Tony out.”

Loki could barely wait until Stark had switched off the camera before revealing himself.

“He did _what_?”

The man screamed as he dropped the camera he was holding and whirled around. “How- Who the fuck are you? What are you doing here?”

“I have no time for such chit-chat. Answer me, mortal,” Loki waved a hand menacingly. Green threads shot toward Stark’s neck. It was but a threat — if he had truly meant to hurt him, he wouldn’t have left the threads visible; but this Stark had no way to know.

“Oh, shit.” Tony gulped, “You guys have real, hand wavy magic now. This is bad.”

Loki rolled his eyes, muttering, “What is this idiom you human have. Never meet your heroes? I can get why.” He cut the air-supply from Stark’s throat to stop him from answering — the large eyes and smug smirk were annoying enough. “Now, I believed I asked you a question. Did Thor truly kidnap the President of the United States, yes or no?”

The reminder was enough to suppress the _glee_ that had taken over the mortal’s face, and Loki found his answer. He relaxed his hold on Stark’s throat until his magic was only a caress against the man's skin. “Sit. I believe we have much to talk about.”

Stark fixed him with an unreadable stare, but complied. “Yes, I believe we do.” The hard look transformed into a shit-eating grin as the mortal looked him up and down. “Your heroes, uh?”

Loki resolutely ignored him, even if he couldn’t quite fight back the blush that threatened to take over his face, and sat on the other side of the table.

He had thought Thor needed to be taught a lesson for a long while, now. Unfortunately for him, Loki would be the one to deal it out, and Tony was going to help him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.  
> Comments are love! <3


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